Game of Owns: Checking In With Cat

In this episode of Game of Owns, your friendly hosts take a break from their read-through of A Clash of Kings to chat with a special guest, Cat Taylor. Cat works behind the scenes of Game of Thrones, both in the production office and on-set, which means she knows all the season 4 secrets! But will she spill the beans? Listen and find out!

Episode 133 – Checking In With Cat

Game of Owns welcomes back Cat Taylor as she takes a small break from the loads of new and exciting work happening with Game of Thrones Season 4, to catch up with your hosts.

Discussion Topics
Watching Season 3 end, together
Cat’s project, a long kept secret
Behind the scenes, captured
Feeling out a busy Season 4
Tywin and Olenna
Mace Tyrell
Red Wedding’s violence
Season 3’s final scene
It’s in the details
Titancon 2013
Her definitive Owns of S3

Quite correct. You should be annoyed. I am, at myself. There is no defence really, other than to say that is how I read Olenna all those years ago and sometimes I slip back. Habits and all that. 100% right to find it irritating. I do when I hear myself say it.Jack,

Not sure if this is the right time/place, but I’m curious about Shireen’s light hair. I don’t have a huge problem with is, since I figure it is a side effect of her disease, but I wondered if there was any official word on the subject.

I call it the “Cargo Cult” – the idea being that normal Q&A is normally overwhelmed with “Hey is Theon really bad?” or “aren’t dragons cool?” questions, while these are specifically questions for a “Loremaster” which could only have been devised by Admins who are paying strict, obsessive attention to detail (among our weapons are fear, surprise, and a fanatical devotion to detail).

So we made up a list of over 70 questions (and growing) specifically to send in to the writers (not cast members) to help us deal with lore questions:

I actually got one of these into the last WinterIsComing.net Cogman Q&A, the one about Jaehaerys II being cut – but he didn’t explain *why* he was cut, and more importantly, what this means for how the Baratheons and Targaryens intermarried (we can’t make a family tree diagram until we know that).

Other things are divided between “how changes to the show affect lore” and “questions from the books”. I.e. the first category asks, “okay, you changed something; Robb Stark is older. How much older? How is Joffrey stated to be seventeen in dialogue if he’s supposed to be younger than Robb? etc.” or “Cersei and Robert had a child in the TV series? What was it’s name?” – confirming the ramifications of TV-continuity changes.

The other category is general stuff like “is the Grand Maester the head of the Order of Maesters, or is the Conclave of Archmaesters?”

So please forward this to the relevant authorities, in the hopes that they will get back to us about such “loremaster” issues.

Cat Taylor:
Quite correct. You should be annoyed. I am, at myself. There is no defence really, other than to say that is how I read Olenna all those years ago and sometimes I slip back. Habits and all that. 100% right to find it irritating. I do when I hear myself say it.Jack,

Among our questions in the Cargo Cult is “how to pronounce Tyrell properly” (seriously I’ve even asked David Peterson about this: http://www.dothraki.com/2013/07/vaes-dothrak-vimithreri/ and he says “Tie-rell” – that scene in “Walk of Punishment” was weird when Cersei and Tywin are both using alternate forms (“Tih-rell”) at the same time)

And while we’re at it another question is if he’ll release any subsequent official cast Pronunciation Guides, as he did release the Season 1 Pronunciation Guide.

Hey Game of Thrones wikia people, you’ve got a photo of the wrong guy in Dean-Charles Chapman’s entry. That photo is of a boy with a similar name but that is definitely not him. This is the right actor.

The idea of the ‘chess portrait’ with Tywin and Queen of thornes playing against each other and the pieces are the rest of the characters (the Freys, Loras, ext) is absolutely amazing !! I wish I had the talent to draw something like that… :(

It is already known by all us GoT fans that GoT was HBO’s flagship and much bigger then HBO’s ‘True Blood’ overseas and in merchandising… But some have mentioned that TB was still bigger in the states.

However, with the this season TB’s rating numbers in and it’s finale barely pulling in 4 million there is absolutely no doubt to anyone in the know, that GoT has become HBO’s flagship both at home and abroad…

I find that awesome because so many of you were so worried at how the masses would receive a drama bathed in so many fantasy elements…

And while we’re at it another question is if he’ll release any subsequent official cast Pronunciation Guides, as he did release the Season 1 Pronunciation Guide.

Apparently David’s input into the English pronunciations used on the show is pretty limited, although he said he’d be interested in doing more…

Surnames are a funny thing though, it’s not unusual in real life for the same surname to be pronounced quite differently even by members of the same family!!

Mine certainly gets rendered a bunch of different ways… I have the unfortunate curse of a French surname, which in my family is given a pseudo-French (but not quite) pronunciation, but which looks very similar to a completely different English name and often is pronounced as such, even by people who’ve known me for years… My French students have to get it right to pass my class, but most other people I just let them call me whatever.

So isn’t all that unrealistic for people on the show to vary slightly in their Tirrels vs Tyrells.

It’s great to hear from Cat that the action scene(s) this coming season will not disappoint…

That is my one fear for this coming season. My desire and anticipation to see THE DUEL is massively intense. I want this to be the most epic duel ever seen on TV and be just like the books with the action sequences and dialog. If THE DUEL disappoints me I will be so let down. I had the same fear for the RW scene but D&D really delivered on that even more then I hoped for.

I just hope D&D pore a lot of resources into THE DUEL and really deliver and satisfy us the way they did with the RW. I will be teary-eyed and lumpy throated with sheer excitement… Can’t wait to hear the famous words spoken throughout THE DUEL…

That’s actually non-canon, GRRM is on record saying that that one name was simply intended to be a funnily spelled Peter, nothing more. But isn’t bothered by fans’ and others’ pronunciations, anyone can hear it the way they want in their heads while reading.

Well if one pronounces Tyrell a certain way, they should pronounce Petyr a certain way. They should match, I think. Gendry is one that is less ambiguous though. I can’t think if ant English word that begins with gen and has the pronunciation given on the show. Gender, Genesis, gentle, generous… But English isn’t a language that makes a whole lot of sense anyway, so whatever

Sooo ….. anyone else out there regretting that Jon is so far north and that winter is coming? Maybe we can talk Cat into convincing HBO that we should see some alterations in the story line and get him further south and into some more warm weather clothing. You know … for the betterment of the story of course ….

Chickenduck: Apparently David’s input into the English pronunciations used on the show is pretty limited, although he said he’d be interested in doing more…

Surnames are a funny thing though, it’s not unusual in real life for the same surname to be pronounced quite differently even by members of the same family!!

Mine certainly gets rendered a bunch of different ways…I have the unfortunate curse of a French surname, which in my family is given a pseudo-French (but not quite) pronunciation, but which looks very similar to a completely different English name and often is pronounced as such, even by people who’ve known me for years…My French students have to get it right to pass my class, but most other people I just let them call me whatever.

So isn’t all that unrealistic for people on the show to vary slightly in their Tirrels vs Tyrells.

Petyr is pronounced Pet-aye-er. To this day, I still pronounce his name that way in my head and flicnh when I hear him called Peter on the show. lol

Let’s not forget, Caitlyn – Katelyn / Catelyn / ” Cat-Lin ” .
I never had any problems recognizing Petyr Littlefinger, or lady Margaery, perhaps
I recognize those as being more authentic spellings. One thing I absolutely despise
are all the US spellings of words that should have ” s ” or ” u ” in them, but now
spell out with a ” z” and skipping the ” u ” entirely. I literally have to force a word
on this built in spell check here, because it auto corrects.
* ie. recognise , neighbour, etc. There’s the sense that I’m misspelling words as
I type here. The correction thingy loathes my trying to add ” ser ” to any name title
No worries though, just amusing and annoying at the same time.

WildSeed: Let’s not forget, Caitlyn – Katelyn / Catelyn / ” Cat-Lin ” .
I never had any problems recognizing Petyr Littlefinger, or lady Margaery, perhaps
I recognize those as being more authentic spellings. One thing I absolutely despise
are all the US spellings of words that should have ” s ” or ” u ” in them, but now
spell out with a ” z” and skipping the ” u ” entirely. I literally have to force a word
on this built in spell check here, because it auto corrects.
* ie. recognise , neighbour, etc. There’s the sense that I’m misspelling words as
I type here.

Most Australians spell things the British way, and a lot get annoyed by the s vs z in “recognise” and the ou vs o in “colour”…

They said “gen,” not ge.
I honestly don’t really care about the pronunciation. If I understand who the person is talking about, whatever. Somewhat off-topic, but I’m pretty sure the reason most Americans find it annoying to have (minor) spelling or pronunciation “corrected” by other countries is that they perceive it as snobby and dictatorial. My guess is that knowing someone understands what you’re saying but is insisting you do it their way is frustrating (as I’ve found that most Western people react poorly to being told what to do). The whole reason we speak is to convey ideas. Maybe being told you’re doing it wrong even though your goal has been achieved rubs your subconscious the wrong way? Who knows.

All I know is that personally I think people who insist on things like a u in color or using a z instead of an s are wasting their time. All written language is a bastardization of some other written language, pretty much. A person who speaks Greek or Latin could probably go up to an english speaker and say we’re writing about 80 percent of our words incorrectly. And I find pronunciation debates pretty stupid as well. It’s all just sounds that we’ve decided mean something. When a person says “dog” in French, do you tell them they’re saying it wrong? What makes one group of sounds one language and another group a different language is rather arbitrary, given the similar origins of words. Plus there’s the fact that even among one group you might have several different accents. I’m probably not explaining my views on these debates very well, but the tl;dr version is this: languages change all the time and they’re just groups of sounds that we decided mean something. Letters are just little marks that we decided represent some sound. The purpose of language is to communicate. Because of this, the concept of “correct” pronunciation and debates over minor spelling differences are rather pointless. If two people understand each other, why have debates about who’s saying it correctly or writing it correctly? In the bigger picture there really is no such thing as correct or incorrect. For example, rubber might mean three different things depending on where you are or the context, but overall, what does it really mean? Nothing. It’s just sounds. To one person (American) it might mean condom. To another (someone in the UK) it might mean thing you erase with. To another group it might mean nothing at all. Just sounds, man. Just sounds…

I thought so too. In his Nerd HQ panel, Richard Madden said he took a Stark direwolf and a Lannister lion from that set home as keepsakes.
He really wanted the sword but could not forsee getting through airport security.